TV News: ‘The Flash’ live-action coming to CW, ‘Amazon’ put on hold

Deadline brings the exciting news that in the wake of the success of Arrow, a live action series based on The Flash will be fast-tracked (pun intended?) to the CW network in the next year. It will come from the Arrow creative team of team of co-creators Greg Berlanti and Andrew Kreisberg and the pilot is expected to be directed by David Nutter.

Based on the DC Comics character of the same name, according to THR, the intention is to introduce the origin story of Barry Allen during the second season of Arrow, as a kind of back-door pilot to a new series. CW president Mark Pedowitz told reporters on Tuesday at the Television Critics Association’s summer press tour about these plans:

“We plan to introduce the recurring character of Barry Allen, who is the Flash. We’re planning an origin story and we’ll see how it goes. We do want to expand on the DC Universe, and we felt this is a very organic way to get there.”

“We wanted everyone to know about the show as that process commenced. We think it fits well both in terms of (Arrow) and (as a stand-alone series).”

The DC Comics character was originally created by writer Gardner Fox and artist Harry Lampert, and the Golden Age character first appeared in Flash Comics #1 (January 1940). However, the more familiar version of The Flash came much later. The Silver Age is rightly said to begin with Showcase #4 (in October 1956) which introduced a new version of The Flash, under editor Julius Schwartz, writer Gardner Fox, and artist Carmine Infantino. This version of the character starred in a short-lived 1990s live action TV series with actor John Wesley Shipp as Barry Allen, although the character was somewhat amalgamated with Wally West, a later version of The Flash.

Meanwhile, Amazon – based on the Wonder Woman Comics – has long been in development hell, with Pedowitz adding “The script isn’t where we want it. It’s better to wait and get it right.” Perhaps The Flash/Arrow strategy is now the future template for Warner/DC properties.

Despite the announcement of a Batman/Superman film at Comic-Con this year, Warner now seems to be content also building DC Television Universe on the smaller screen. Historically, TV and animation is where these characters have done well, so the future is finally looking bright for DC Comics properties.